With Oleksandr V. Turchynov, a former acting prime minister and close ally of Ms. Tymoshenko, presiding over the Parliament, her Fatherland party seemed to be in charge, at least temporarily.

With a veto-proof majority of more than 300 of the 450 seats, Mr. Turchynov guided the Parliament through the constitutional process of declaring the president unable to fulfill his duties and setting a date for new elections.

clint said...Does anyone know whether any of this is actually legal under the Ukrainian constitution?

===============You mistake "veneration" of a scrap of paper the sort Americans and Islamists worship....with revolutionary change.Revolution can discard any scrap of paper ordering the citizenry's lives.Did Kemal Attaturk fail to venerate the sacred Koran's dictates in creating modern Turkey? Yes. Was it legal to discard law the Ottomans based on the text of the Holy Koran itself without the assent of the High Judges? Sure...revolutions make their own law. No rule of all by Mullahs as final word of holy texts. In America, perhaps one day when things get bad enough we will fix grave flaws in our Constitution through Revolution and abandoning Rule of Law(yers). Hopefully the 2nd major repair process to the Constitution will not be as bloody as the 1st (The US Civil War).

The Ukraine has it easier. Their Constitution is far more recent and there is less tying them up in "veneration" claptrap...given many of the Ukrainian "Holy Founders" who drafted the thing are still alive and as adament as Thomas Jefferson was that the sentiments of long past generations should not "enslave and bind" future generations.

Makes sense. To create America you had to discard 800 years of laws made by "British Founding Fathers". Turkey through recognizing that law based on life in the 7th century Arabian desert didn't work best. And Ukraine had to discard the "revered by lawyers and good communists" Soviet Constitution to be established in the early 90s.

I'm confused by the "veto-proof majority" in Parliament against Yanukovych, yet he was elected President in 2010. Was there an intervening parliamentry election that gave a huge majority to the forces opposed to the president?

Oso Negro said..."Veneration claptrap," said Cedarford, speaking of the U.S. Constitution. I suppose he will be in the blue state pajama legion, wielding a steaming mug of cocoa.

==============I'm more looking at it from the Red States/Tea Party perspective - and how the bicoastal Elites have used Rule of Law(yers)and a misplaced "reverency" for law and the judges the Elites control. As they pay for or directly write laws the masses have no voice in, judges who the Elites appoint - to savage America and put it in sharp decline.

The Cracker Emcee said...Yes, the Russian tanks will roll to "protect the Russian minority". Interesting how regional histories repeat themselves despite all our assumptions about modernity and globalism.

2/22/14, 5:04 PM"

While possible I wouldn't assume it to be inevitable. The Russian Army of today isn't the Red Army of 1956 or 1968. And the Ukrainians are capable of fighting back.

Clint, of course it isn't. It's completely illegal and illegitimate. This isn't a coup d'etat, it's revolution, nothing less. The democratically-elected government of the Ukraine has been overthrown by armed, violent revolutionaries. And for that reason, if Crack Emcee is correct about the Russian tanks, I fail to see how any conceivable basis for objecting to Moscow's decision (which I will support) has not been forfeited. Revolutionaries deserve the treatment that, eventually, the revolution always dishes out to its victims.

"While possible I wouldn't assume it to be inevitable. The Russian Army of today isn't the Red Army of 1956 or 1968. And the Ukrainians are capable of fighting back."

Georgia? I don't think Putin is fucking around when it comes to the Russosphere. Who's going to stop him? And I imagine there's a world of difference between rioting in the square and facing down a few armored divisions.

Don't worry, Oso, revolution fucks everyone and everything in its path. That's always how these things go, and for that reason, it cannot be condoned—under any circumstances. Your mother in law is part of the problem; she should go home and make plans to vote against President Yanukovich, which was her proper remedy in the first place. Imagine if tea-party activists now descend en masse on Washington in violent protests that lay waste to the capital and force President Obama to suspend the Constitution and agree to immediate new elections for Congress and the White House (and, for good measure, forcing him to flee the White House). Would we think that legitimate? Of course not. President Obama would have been well within his authority to crush the rebellion by military force if necessary. Yanukovich's dangerous refusal to shut down this disaster by all necessary measures is regrettable, and the revolution's success leaves only one force capable of stepping in and restoring order: Russia. I don't know whether they will intervene, but they must, and I hope they do.